


Of Apologies and Goodbyes

by vilyas



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s08e07 Kill the Moon, Pre-Episode: s08e08 Mummy on the Orient Express
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 11:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vilyas/pseuds/vilyas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor hates endings, yet he knows that Clara Oswald deserves a proper goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Apologies and Goodbyes

It took Clara a few days to realize that her life was not as wonderful as she had previously believed. It was wonderful in the fact that it was hers, but it was boring and dull. Leaving things with the Doctor as they’d been, a mess of salty tears and angry words, it was all she could think about. Thought of their parting were the first that came to her mind when she woke up in the morning and stumbled tiredly to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, her eyes searching the spot in the lounge where that blue box just fit perfectly. He crossed her mind when she walked the halls of Coal Hill. The Doctor was even the last thought that fluttered about her mind before sleep would finally claim her.

Her pain was warranted, it was justified, but with each passing thought she tried to move past it by attempting to see things through his eyes. Somehow, it made sense. He had trusted her—he trusted her to make the choice, to find the outcome where no one had to die. If he’d been there he would have sympathized with the alien, the last of its kind, so alone and always there, lurking about Earth as its companion. Granted, that would have been the right decision, as it was the one that she ultimately made, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that, to do that to her.

It was almost enlightening.

Then the guilt crawled in, slipping in through the cracks of her entire being. She shouldn’t have yelled at him, told him to go far away, to leave her. At least three times each day she pulled up his contact information on her phone, thumb hovering hesitantly over the decision to call him, to ask him to come back… each time she ended up locking her phone and shoving it in her pocket or in her purse.

For Clara it had been a week since the events that took place on the moon. Wednesday had come and passed without one sighting of that familiar blue box. She actively looked for it too—looked for him. As she woke up she immediately glanced to the corner by the door, and she wiped the sleep from her eyes with a slight frown. The lounge was still empty when she went for her coffee. The route to Coal Hill was empty, no sightings of the TARDIS or her pilot. She even checked all the rooms in the school, hoping that perhaps he was here, but staying at a distance. Clara was disappointed that she was wrong, that he’d actually listened to her.

Still, she was too proud to call him, to initiate the apologizing exchange that they both deserved. It was in pride that the problem rested, because the Doctor was too proud as well. Even more than that, he noticed it as an opportunity to save Clara. If he just stayed away he would save her, from the dangers of their adventures, and ultimately from the danger that was himself.

She’d died for him thousands of times over, perhaps even more, copies that were snuffed out like candles left out in the cold, blown out with one single brush of the wind. The Doctor didn’t want the same thing to happen to the actual Clara, to his Clara. He should just stay away, he repeats it over and over again to himself; it becomes his mantra. He looks at the console, thinking how easy it would be to just go back and get her.

Wandering an alien world on his own, he turns to his side, about to start explaining exactly why the sky appears to be burning. Only Clara isn’t there. He says it aloud this time as his gaze fell to the orange grass; somehow the Burning Skies of Aphelia Six just wasn’t beautiful anymore, not without Clara Oswald standing beside him. The words repeated as low whisper that carried with the wind. “Stay away from her. It’s what’s best for her.”

Yet in the end his resolve crumbles. He visits a world where the inhabitants, an intelligent race of avian-like humanoids, hatch in pairs. Under the light of the sun, of all the pods that scatter the birthing lands, they always come to life in pairs. It is on this world that the Doctor is completely alone. When the planet is threatened by an ongoing war in the system, when the world is about to be taken under siege, the land and its people both put to use… the Doctor ends the war and saves them all. Everyone is still in pairs at the end of the day.

Except for him.

His resolve crumbles violently, crashing down around him and he cannot rebuild it. He hears her voice. It echoes all around him and within his mind. It’s as if she’s a ghost, and she’s haunting him. The words she speaks are always so full of sorrow, and anger that has the ability to break his hearts all over again. One last glance as the world he’s saved, the day that they celebrated him as their hero, he hears those words and his hearts sink.

_( “You didn’t even say goodbye!” )_

He waits from a safe distance at first. He doesn’t mind making the TARDIS invisible, taking the breaks off. She’s silent as he observes her. He first lands on the small balcony of her flat, looking in through the glass doors as she goes about her day, which he thinks is a Saturday, ten days after they parted ways. Clara spends the whole day in her flat. She marks papers, watches a movie, makes a soufflé that she seemed rather pleased with. It all seems like a completely normal day, until he saw her look at her phone, brown hues then filling with tears. It didn’t ring or vibrate; he may have poked the sonic through the doors and pointed it at her phone just to see what had made her upset. The reading showed that she hadn’t just received any calls or texts.

It’s then that he thinks that she might call him, that it’s his name on the screen, the number for the TARDIS lingering beneath a touch… He watches as she throws her phone on the other side of the sofa. The call never comes. He knows that she deserves a proper goodbye. After everything she’s done for him, she deserves so much more than he could ever give her. The least he can do is tell her goodbye, let her know that she will be missed more than he knows how to put into words.

The Doctor collects data, the one thing he can actually understand, and determines when he can actually speak to her again. The chalkboards of the TARDIS are covered in white writing, all pertaining to her. He doesn’t sleep—he can’t sleep, not when he has so much planning to do. Time passes strangely in the TARDIS, but if one were to count the hours he spent working everything out they would find that had spent a complete twenty-eight hours on everything. His hands are covered in chalk dust, and there’s a great deal of it on his pants in the form of hand and fingerprints. He’s done it though. A change of clothes later and he lands the TARDIS, putting on his coat as he walks out the doors.

 

Clara returns back to her flat on Monday, twelve days since she’d told him to leave. Closing the door behind her, she could hear a shuffling in the kitchen. Her first thought isn’t that there’s an intruder, or that somehow Danny was in her flat waiting to surprise her, but that it was him. Her eyes fell closed for a moment as she exhaled a soft sigh; she wasn’t angry anymore, she really did miss him, but it was still difficult to come face to face with him. An apology lingered on her tongue for the past six days, yet she couldn’t remember what she wanted to say, not when she was presented with the opportunity to tell him.

"I’ve made tea," he tells her, not bothering to peak out into the small hallway to look her way. He’s nervous, and he’s treating her much like one would treat a cat; he’s letting Clara come to him. The thought crosses his mind and he turns to look at the actual feline that is perched like a statue on the counter. Aurelius lets out a small meow, but the Doctor speaks cat. The stray cat that Clara had picked up from 82nd Century Earth had just made it known that Clara missed him. Despite how smart he is, the Doctor can’t quite process this information, or actually he doesn’t know how. He blinks and the feline hops down from the counter, scurrying off back to Clara’s bedroom.

A moment passes and he hears her heels click on the floor behind him. "Look, Doctor, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ha—" The Doctor holds his breath as he turns around, holding out both hands to her. One offers her a steaming cup of tea, just the way she loves it (a touch of milk and three generous spoonfuls of sugar), and the other is a ticket of some sort. Her curiosity bests her, and she goes for the ticket first. "What’s this?"

"An apology, the farewell that you deserve, whichever one sounds better, you pick. It’s a ticket for the Orient Express, the one in space. Don’t really need a ticket with the TARDIS, but it’s helpful to have one, I suppose." His voice seems to lack the enthusiasm that it usually holds; something about it breaks her heart. Slowly, she smiles at him, but it’s a sad smile—he sees that truth in her eyes, just as she can see it in his. “If you want to go, I mean. A proper goodbye, one last trip together, you and I.”

The small brunette stares at him for a long moment, taking him in. She thinks briefly that she should still be angry with him, but she can’t quite find those emotions within her any longer, at least not right in this moment. Hesitantly she takes the ticket from him, looking it over. There is a part of her that just wants to cry, not necessarily out of sadness, but because the gesture somehow speaks volumes to her. For a second or two she can see him, the version that he hides away from everyone, even her. Clara is suddenly taken back to that moment when a stranger wearing a bow tie had asked her to come away with him.

He asks that same question again, eyes so full of hope just as they once were so long ago. “Will you come with me?”

Clara knows she shouldn’t, that she should just share a cup of tea with him and say their goodbye right here in her flat, but she can’t. She physically can’t bring herself to do such a thing. That first time she told him to come back the next day. This time, she can’t do that. Her lips curl upwards as she takes the tea from him and sets it on the counter, eyes glowing as her gaze finally finds his.

“Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was written just within the last hour, as a part of my nanowrimo collection.  
> If you'd like to request a prompt, you can do so at my tumblr.  
> (http://claraaoswlds.tumblr.com/)


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